Martin Paling

1940’s NAAFI Tearoom

Martin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:34:19 +0000

I recorded this in the NAAFI tearoom at the Great Central Railway April 2009.

The tearoom is decorated and set as if it were the 1940s. Era music and the crackling of a fire proved irresistible to record, sadly it didn’t last long as customers arrived for a cup of hot chocolate!

Recorded with the ZOOMH4’s internal stereo mic (handheld) with a handmade windgag

You are free to copy, distribute and make derivative works under this licence*

*For commercial use-age please contact me

Rate My Ride

Martin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:01:16 +0000

Rate My Ride Car

My younger brother has started this great new site for gaming racing fans.

Its a great place to share photos and images of cars that you have tuned and painted in your favourite racing games. Visit Rate My Ride today

London Sound Survey : Wildlife Sounds

Martin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 10:31:59 +0000

Many of you will know about the excellent London Sound Survey, the website that aims to document contemporary and historic sounds from the UK’s capital. I’m an avid reader of the site and the great work that Ian Rawes (its creator) is doing there. Recently Ian opened a new Wildlife section featuring the sounds of London’s wildlife. One of the great things about our capital are it’s many parks and wildlife reserves – many of which have sprung up almost organically and been curated by local people.

Wildlife recording is one area i’d like to concentrate more on but it takes a huge amount of patience, in that sense it’s not too dissimilar to Railway audio recording: in that you hunt out a good spot, set up and wait… hoping for that moment when you “catch” the sound you want. And of course it also suffers from nay of the same problems of railway recording, unwanted environmental noises like cars, tractors, people and planes can ruin an otherwise perfect recording.

Pop over to the London Sound Survey and lose yourself in the sounds of the capital – you might be surprised at what you find!

Gresley N2 Tank

Martin — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:46:49 +0000

This is a beautiful little (Big) engine. I just love the colour and the lining. This recording was made at the Great Central Railway. Just before my partner and I went for an evening meal on the train.

We’d wandered down to the Loughborough shed from Loughborough central station and the engine was just having its fill of water for the trip. Sadly I had to edit out the filling because a) it takes way too long and b) there was a car in the background.

One to listen to with headphones… it makes a great “chugging” noise as it rolls off towards the station.

If you have not been for a meal on the Great Central Railway I recommend you do, its not cheap but well worth the experience. My only criticism would be is that they need to clean the carriage windows a little more throughly and that some of the table fittings are lacking in quality. The meal and ambience however is great!

Recorded with the ZOOMH4’s internal stereo mic (handheld) with a handmade windgag

You are free to copy, distribute and make derivative works under this licence*

*For commercial use-age please contact me

Children Unfriendly Railways?

Martin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:44:50 +0000

A few days ago I was up at the North Yorkshire Moors Railway with my brothers, nieces and parents where I’m sorry to say we had a terrible experience. I’m “sorry” because I had thought the NYMR to be one of the best railways in the country. For the full story head on over to Railnuts, the excellent railway community site run by Pete Waterman.

Although a lot of our railways are predominantly run by volunteers the marketing of our railways has gotten to the point where they are now undeniably in the entertainment industry, the people visiting these attractions are there for a “day out” in recent years I’ve seen a huge increase in the number of families, especially when it comes to “Thomas Days” Pete Waterman has made a very thought provoking blog post about this.

London Sound Survey : Wildlife Sounds

Clifton Hotel, Scarborough

Martin — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 10:20:23 +0000

Sorry not an audio recording. Instead I’m posting about a Hotel I stayed in recently. “Why?” you ask? Well, from time to time I have to stay in Hotels for work and every so often there’s something so bad about them that I just want to get it off my chest.

Take the Clifton Hotel in Scarborough for example owned by English Rose Hotels. I stayed there on Friday the 21st August. The exterior is quite impressive and has excellent views over Scarborough’s North Bay. The staff were incredibly friendly and polite, the food was ok… but the room I stayed in… was hideous. Dirty, damp, peeling wallpaper, mould patches… the lot!

There’s a plaque in the hotel informing you that Wilfred Owen the WW1 poet stayed in the Hotel… on entering our room I wondered whether it had been cleaned since he left! What’s was so mind boggling about the room was that tea and coffee making supplies had been carefully arranged on the side but the filthy windows remained uncleaned. Take a look at this photo, this isn’t a few days worth of dirt… its a long and steady build up of muck!

Filthy window at the Clifton Hotel Scarborough

We we’re staying as guest of my parents, who I must admit had a slightly cleaner room, so at the time I didn’t feel like complaining especially as we we’re only there for one night. But for £65 for a night had I been paying myself I’d have kicked up a real fuss! Generally the Hotel needs some TLC all around, a lot of the hallways had stained on the ceilings, bits of woodwork or panelling coming free etc. The decoration in the lounge was dated but I’m not the interior design police so I can put up with that.

The saddest thing about the hotel is that every single member of staff I met was very friendly and seemed to enjoy their jobs, even the younger staff members who so often tend to be a little grump in other hotels we’re polite and helpful.

To see the peeling wallpaper, mould and dirt look through the gallery below

No related posts.

Hunslet Playing on the Cob Porthmadog

Martin — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 21:43:38 +0000

Recordings of Hunslets “Playing” on the cob at the Ffestiniog Railway in Wales. Recorded in May 2008

Recorded with the ZOOMH4’s internal stereo mic (handheld) and a home made wind gag.

You are free to copy, distribute and make derivative works under this licence*

*For commercial use-age please contact me

Photo Credits

I’d like to thank the following for allowing me to use their fantastic images in this post(Also in movie)

Rob Phillips (OldMiwi) : http://www.flickr.com/photos/oldmiwl/

LNER Class O4 Departs Quorn

Martin — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 12:29:28 +0000

LNER Class O4 63601 Departs Quorn

I love this engine… it makes a great noise. At the start of this recording you can almost hear it saying “I can do it, I can do it” as as if from a Thomas the Tank Engine story… it then struggles, hisses and pants up the incline from Quorn with a full train finally celebrating with an exhausted “whistle” somewhere past the Rushey Lane bridge.

As much as I love the GCR it’s a real pain to record from with more environmental noise than you’d think: Apart from all of the nearby roads East Midlands Airport have ruined also many a recording – My girlfriend think’s it’s hugely entertaining to watch me sitting quietly in a field making a recording to suddenly stop and start shouting obscenities at EasyJet.

This was recorded south of Quorn not far from the Rushey Lane bridge and about 400 metres from the lineside. That distance means the mics are set to a very high gain… so a windshield is essential even in the great weather we had that day. This has been edited to kill a lot of the mics own self noise (I really need to get better mics and have my eye on a pair of matched Rode NT1, although a studio mic they’re popular with field recording folk because they have very low self noise… I’m constantly watching Ebay for deals!!!)

Recorded with my ZoomH4 a SUPERLUX E523/D microphone and Homemade Microphone Windshield System.

You are free to copy, distribute and make derivative works under this licence*

*For commercial use-age please contact me

Vimeo vs YouTube

Martin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 13:22:43 +0000

With my monthly bandwidth pulling in at over 20gb a few months ago I decided to host all of my sound clips offsite in an effort to reduce costs. Originally I was going to opt for YouTube… until I discovered Vimeo. The immediate attraction for me was the cleaner look and style of its video player, the Vimeo site is also a lot nicer looking than YouTube – and it doesn’t suffer from some of the idiots you’ll find on YouTube too: post a video on YouTube and more often than not you’ll get some moron leaving unfriendly and often offensive comments. Vimeo however seems to want to nurture a more friendly and constructive community, in-game video footage is disallowed and the content on the site tends to be of a more artistic nature.

So what are the cons? well unless you choose to upgrade to Vimeo Plus then you’ll be restricted to uploading only 500mb a month (not a problem in my case but might be a problem for others) standard members videos also get put into a “processing queue” that can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 2 hours+ (depending on the site traffic at the time of upload) however it’s worth noting that in my experience I’ve often found my videos are ready before the time given, maybe that’s because mine are so short? Unlike YouTube you can’t batch upload either.

Another con for iPhone and iPod Touch owners is that to date there is no app that plays Vimeo videos, though it’s something that Vimeo staff say they are keen to remedy in the future.

Overall I much prefer using Vimeo, it’s true that my sound clips won’t get the exposure and viewers they will on YouTube… but I’m not doing this to be popular, I post to this site because I want to.

Although Vimeo has been running for a couple of years now I suppose there is always that concern that its running on a finite amount of resources, it’s well known that YouTube with its billions of visitors and videos doesn’t make a profit, indeed Credit Suisse estimate that it makes an annual loss of $500m – though recent reports suggest that figure might be much less.

Hopefully Vimeo will survive, it has built up a nice community and the content on offer there is very good, the Plus package should help bolster running costs… but just incase I’ve also uploaded all of my sound clips to YouTube too!

Eric Morecambe Graffiti in Loughborough

Martin — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 14:05:55 +0000

Over the last few weeks I’ve spotted some stencil graffiti that looks like Eric Morecambe in and around Loughborough. The first one I spotted was on the bridge crossing the Great Central Railway on Rushey Lane (Though it was soon painted over). Then I began to notice them in Loughborough town centre whilst out shopping and on a number of traffic signal boxes and signs.

Is it Art? Possibly. But if so it’s not particularly great – it’s hardly a touch on Banksy!